Connect

A retrospective look at Helen Gurley Brown

Helen Gurley Brown, author and long time editor for Cosmopolitan magazine died this week at the age of 90. Her views on women were considered so outrageous that she was often booed and bombed with tomatoes at public appearances. Despite this, her book Sex and the Single Girl, published in 1962, was a best seller and according to Gloria Steinem made Brown a feminist "pioneer".

Brown believed single women should be able to have sex and enjoy it, outside the confines of marriage; a view considered by some, like author Barbara Ehrenreich to be revolutionary for the times. On today's show Mary Glenney takes a look back at this complicated and often controversial woman and her writing.